Tony Abbott ... a man of fire and water

Sunrise at Manly. The half-dozen surfers who paddled out in the dark have been joined by a battalion of others, ready to do battle with the glassy waves, the shifting banks and each other. Tony Abbott is among them. Anonymous.

The surf is solid, the big ones overhead, and the exception is the wave that doesn't close out. Abbott is amiably pensive, sitting on his 10-foot board out the back. ''I'm just sitting here working up my courage,'' he muses.

Soon enough, he commits, kamikaze-style, makes the drop and is lost in the close-out of a wave that demands respect. Then he is back in the line-up, ready to go again, and again, before swapping the wetsuit for a suit and that trademark blue tie, and heading off to meet his New Zealand counterpart.

Almost six months into the job, 56-year-old Abbott is beginning to put his stamp on the prime ministership, and two pictures are starting to take shape. One is of the politician still prone to deliver sound bites that enrage his detractors, such as accusing the ABC of taking ''everyone's side but Australia's'', but also of a leader who is commanding the respect of his colleagues.

''There's a good feel of unity within the cabinet and a good feeling towards him,'' one senior minister says, reflecting the view of others spoken to for this story. ''His has a very consultative approach, where people are given a genuine say.''

The first picture is of a conventional politician, utterly focused on the task he has set himself, carrying the excess baggage of negativity from his time as opposition leader, and still prone to fight old battles and settle old scores. The second is of one of the most unorthodox PMs in the country's history: the man who turned down the option of renting a luxury home in Canberra while The Lodge is refurbished; who would rather live in his suburban Forestville home than the Prime Minister's official Sydney residence of Kirribilli House, and who continues to turn up for surf life saving patrols and voluntary firefighting duties. The surfer who will paddle out with the hordes at Manly and expect no special treatment.

Last weekend, Abbott spent a full day meeting his obligations as a member of the Davidson Rural Fire Brigade and found himself reflecting briefly on the relative pressures on prime ministers and volunteer firefighters. After an hour or so of tanker and equipment checks, he and the others began performing drills and acting out a range of simulated pressure scenarios where, for instance, they arrived at a property, prepared to fight a fire, and then were called to pack up and head off to another property said to be in greater danger.

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As a former deputy captain of the brigade, Abbott was the officer in command (OIC) of his truck and, when his group was the first on the scene of one notional fire, his job was to assume the role of incident controller until someone more senior arrived to take over.

Problem was, this particular blaze required the firefighters to wear breathing apparatus, and Abbott was one of only two in his truck who were qualified to perform such a role. He confesses it took him about 30 seconds - longer than prudent if they were fighting a real fire - to appreciate that he could not be the man in charge if he was wearing a mask, and to transfer incident control to someone else.

''I said to them afterwards, 'I'm a pretty rusty OIC,'' Abbott recalls. ''It's one thing to be Prime Minister; it's sometimes altogether more challenging to be the OIC of a fire crew.''

The experience, he insists, left him rejuvenated and recharged, and ready for the challenges of his day job.

''One of the points that I have long made to myself, and occasionally made publicly, is that you've got to be a human being first before you can be effective at anything else,'' he says. ''And for me at least, part of being a human being, part of staying grounded, is to do things like that.''

Abbott finished 2013 with the distinction of being the first new prime minister in memory to be denied a honeymoon.

''Unusually, in the history of the past 40 years, he was elevated by the voters from opposition to the prime ministership and started out unpopular. That has not happened to any other opposition leader,'' AC Nielsen's John Stirton says. ''I think his style in opposition is the reason. While he effectively made the case that you couldn't re-elect Labor, the way he went about making that case alienated a lot of voters who haven't seen anything since the election to make them change their mind.

''There have been a number of things along the way - even the criticisms of ABC and the SPC Ardmona decision - have played into his weaknesses rather than his strengths: overstating his case and calling a spade a shovel. The lack of subtlety gets him into trouble.''

For all the heat generated by debates about the ABC, or the conduct of the navy under the secretive Operation Sovereign Borders, or even industry assistance, Abbott's focus is fixed on what he sees as the main game.

''This is going to be the year of keeping commitments,'' he tells Fairfax Media. ''That's going to be good for everyone. It will mean that we will have a stronger economy, and it will also start to restore the faith in our polity, which was regrettably undermined and diminished over the past six years.

''Keeping our commitments means getting rid of the carbon tax, getting rid of the mining tax, getting the Australian Building and Construction Commission up and running, getting the budget on track to a believable surplus, and it means more generally being open for business.

''The personal goal is to conduct ourselves at all times such that fair-minded observers would conclude that this is a competent and trustworthy government.''

While Saturday's Griffith byelection will give an indication of voter sentiment, Abbott sees three clear markers for the year: the looming May budget; the arrival of a new Senate in July; and the hosting of the G20 summit in Brisbane in November. If the budget is well received, and the new Senate passes Abbott's legislation to scrap the carbon and mining taxes, the Prime Minister will have a good story to tell to the biggest gathering of world leaders to assemble in this country.

''I'm very confident that we'll have quite a lot to say by then which won't just be declarations of intent but which will be declarations of performance - this is what we've done,'' he says.

In the budget lead-up, Treasurer Joe Hockey has been laying the ground for a massive dose of pain, including an attack on middle-class and corporate welfare and a retreat by government from areas that can be serviced by the private sector.

Abbott is more measured: ''I don't want people to think that it's all doom and gloom, because there's a purpose to all of this and the purpose is to strengthen our economy over the medium and the long term, but inevitably in this budget there will be things that people don't like much.''

Much of the bad news, he insists, has already been flagged, such as the end of the baby bonus, cuts to the public service and foreign aid, and a bigger emphasis on work for the dole.

''There are a lot of things that we've been very straight with people about, but it is one thing to be straight with people about it; it's another for them to be happy when all of these things actually happen.''

While the Hockey language has been stronger, there is no conflict. The shared commitment is to the principles Abbott laid down in his year-opening speech at Davos: ''You can't give what you haven't got, the answer to the problem of debt and deficit is never more debt and deficit, no country ever taxed or subsidised its way to prosperity and it's very important that we remember all those things.''

Moreover, Abbott rejects suggestions of tension between Hockey's mission to end ''the age of entitlement'' and the pressure from the likes of the Nationals' Barnaby Joyce for drought assistance.

''Ministers have to engage with their natural constituencies and, in the case of the Treasurer, the portfolio constituency is perhaps more naturally fiscally rigorous. In the case of other ministers, the portfolio constituency is more naturally disposed to looking at where government might be able to help with, amongst other things, cash or spending programs.

''But everyone understands that we've got to live within our means, and Barnaby, God bless him, is as conscious of that as anyone. While he is very much in sympathy with rural Australia, he also has the instincts of the country accountant, and country accountants understand that, in the end, you can't borrow what you can't repay.''

The other side of the carbon tax debate is the Coalition promise to tackle climate change with its direct action alternative - an approach that is neither understood nor supported, according to the polls. Asked whether the recent periods of sustained hot temperatures add to the case in the public mind for action, Abbott says: ''They are just part and parcel of life in Australia. Australia is, to use the famous phrase, a land of droughts and flooding rains.''

Another focus will be on an area where Abbott has established credibility over several years - indigenous affairs - starting this week with the annual Closing the Gap report. The Prime Minister intends to continue his practice of spending a week working in an indigenous community - this time on north-east Arnhem Land - and has vowed to advance the cause of indigenous recognition in the constitution.

Here, the challenge will be how far he is prepared to go, given that Noel Pearson, the indigenous leader he most admires, supported ambitious approaches recommended by the expert panel appointed by the Gillard government.

''The challenge will be to find something which is meaningful and significant, but which does not substantially change the constitution,'' Abbott says.

''The general community is comfortable with indigenous recognition, but it doesn't want to create two classes of citizenship … it can't just be bland and relatively insignificant, but it can't be something which presages a whole set of new rights, for instance.''

On stopping the boats, Abbott says there will be no ''mission accomplished'' declaration any time soon, but exudes confidence that he is delivering on the promise. ''Border security, like national security, will always be a work in progress but tomorrow will be 50 days without a boat,'' he said when we spoke on Thursday night.

I ask: ''Could the same result have been achieved without the secrecy?''

Abbott replies: ''I wish, but the trouble with broadcasting everything you do is that you give information to the people smugglers, which helps them, not us, and you buy into a whole lot of unnecessary fights.''

Abbott's attack on the ABC over its coverage of allegations of brutality by the navy towards asylum seekers sits awkwardly with his own attack on the conditions in the award covering SPC Ardmona workers, although he flatly rejects the assertions of overreach by local member Sharman Stone and the company itself.

''If you look at what was said, and if you look at the reality, I don't think there is any inconsistency,'' Abbott says.

Similarly, his observation this week - in the context of union leader Paul Howes' call for a ''grand compact'' between unions, business and government - that we should ''let the past be the past'', sits oddly with his pursuit of former prime ministers Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd.

Asked if the calling of a royal commission into the former government's insulation scheme smacked of retribution, he replies: ''The whole point is to ensure we learn the right lessons from these terrible mistakes. It was probably the most disastrously conceived and executed Commonwealth government program in our history, and I think it's important that we learn the right lessons from it.''

On Sunday, Abbott returns to Canberra and his lodgings at the Australian Federal Police College near Parliament House. If the perception is that he is sharing common quarters on a single bed with raw recruits, he insists it is not accurate.

''It's not that spartan. The college has got a little apartment which is more or less what you'd stay in if you were in the family unit of a country motel. That's basically what it's like,'' he says, adding that wife Margie is comfortable staying there when she comes to Canberra. ''I'm perfectly happy there because, you know, I don't need to be rattling around in a big house.''

Before the election, he expressed confidence he would grow into the job of prime minister if he was successful. Now, he is a work in progress. ''The job impacts on every prime minister,'' he says. ''Some grow in the job. Regrettably, a couple, I think, have shrunk in the job. But the job certainly changes people - there's no doubt about that - hopefully for the better.''